


Midnight Clear

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Banter, Friendship, Gen, Missing Scene, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 12:06:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11148054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Missing scene for 1x05. Peggy can't sleep.





	Midnight Clear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cairistiona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cairistiona/gifts).



Odd, to be camping in the woods again. Peggy lay awake, gazing into the darkness of the trees, listening to the sounds of the camp settling down around her, as soft murmurs and rustling gave way to gentle snoring.

She rolled over in her sleeping bag and prodded at the pillow made of her rolled-up coat. There had been a time when she could have fallen asleep almost instantly, dipping into sleep as soon as the campfire was banked. Now she was all too aware of the pine cone jabbing her in her hip, the flatness of the pillow, and the increasingly loud drone of the snoring coming from Happy Sam to her left.

_Gone soft, Peggy?_ she thought with gentle, deprecating amusement.

She gave it another half-hour or so, but when it became obvious that sleep was not coming, she quietly peeled out of her sleeping bag and put her coat and boots back on. The small huddle of sleeping bags around the fire remained quiet except for snoring. She didn't think anyone was awake to notice her leave.

She couldn't go far without encountering Li and Ramirez on watch, but she didn't need to. She just wanted to clear her head a little.

As soon as the trees closed off the sight of the banked campfire and the men sleeping around it, she could almost imagine she was alone here. Peggy tipped her head back and looked up at the sky. It had been awhile since she'd seen the stars this clear and bright. In New York, they were frequently obscured by the lights of the city.

"Didn't anybody teach you not to wander around in hostile territory?" a low voice said behind her.

Peggy jerked. "Not you, certainly," she murmured dryly, without looking around. "Remember that little French town we camped in, the one where you smuggled an entire cow into camp?"

Dugan snorted as he joined her, stamping into his boots. "Cap made me give it back."

"Well, it wasn't yours. Of course he did." Peggy glanced over at him as he settled the strap of his shotgun over his shoulder. "There's no need to walk with me. I'm not leaving the camp perimeter."

"I know." He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep either."

"Mmmm," was her noncommittal reply as she looked up at the sky again. The stars seemed so close, as if they hung just above the treetops. Clear, sharp, unchanging -- unaffected by the troubles of the world. Wars swept across the landscape, leaving everything different, but the stars were still the same.

"Remember how we used to make up names for the constellations," Dugan said after a moment, "'cause none of us could remember the real names?"

Peggy startled herself with a soft laugh. "I had forgotten completely, to be honest. Who started that, do you remember?"

"Think it was Barnes, wasn't it?"

There was a brief silence, a moment of reflection. _The stars don't change, but the world certainly does._

"Can't remember many of them now," Dugan said. "Where's the one we used to call the Headless Chicken? It was in the west, wasn't it?"

"I don't remember that one. Though now that you mention it ..." Peggy raised a hand, her finger tracing a line of stars above the trees. "I do remember the general consensus about that string of bright stars below Orion's belt. It's supposed to be a knife on his belt, you know. Not anything less, er, appropriate."

"Not to a bunch of lonely soldiers, it ain't."

Peggy snorted.

"And that one over there was the Bathtub," Dugan said, pointing. "No wait, it's up there a little bit."

"There was one called G.I. Jane, wasn't there? I don't remember where it was."

"Don't remember that one. I do remember Dernier naming them all in French, just to annoy everyone else."

"I'm quite fluent," Peggy pointed out, "and not a single one of those names was politely translatable into English."

"Seems to me like most of the English names we came up with weren't politely translatable in English, either."

Peggy giggled quietly, muffling it in her fist. Before tonight, how long had it been since she'd just laughed, freely and happily, in the company of friends?

"You know," she said softly, gazing up at the stars, "I don't think I ever really said ... don't know if I even quite understood, back then ... how much it meant to me that all of you -- that you were willing to just take me as I was. You trusted me covering your six with a rifle. We made up filthy names for stars and it never seemed to bother you if there was a lady present."

"Can't say it was _never_ a problem," Dugan said, a little bit uncomfortably. "But hell, Peggy, you gave as good as you got. You made Morita blush with your jokes, and I didn't think anybody could do that."

"Good times," Peggy murmured. She bumped him with her shoulder. "It is very good to see you again, Sergeant."

"Same here. Y'know, I dunno what kind of bullshit those guys back at the SSR are laying on you, but if you wanna get out of the States, hang around with some people who really appreciate you ..."

Nostalgia washed over her, so powerful she could have cried. She could leave it all behind, walk away from the SSR, away from the belittling and the petty dismissals and the way she had to work ten times as hard as anyone around her just for an ounce of the respect her male coworkers received as naturally as breathing. Back to that remembered, dearly missed camaraderie. She could get used to sleeping rough again, get used to having bugs in her tea and never having dry socks ...

Give up on the SSR and the difference she'd hoped to make there. Give up on her dreams, or at least a significant part of them. Rejoining the Howling Commandos wouldn't be a step forward to her future; intellectually at least, she knew it would be an attempt to cling to a past that had already slipped through her fingers.

Right now, though, with Dugan and the others' friendly welcome like a drink of water in the desert to her friendship-starved soul, it didn't seem like the worst possible devil's bargain.

"Don't tempt me. Or at least, don't ask me in the middle of the night. Let's just focus on the mission at hand, shall we?"

"Okay, but I'm not promising I'll never bring it up again."

Peggy started to answer, but interrupted herself with a yawn. "You know, I think I might be able to sleep now."

"You're gonna need it tomorrow." Giving her a playful nudge, he added, "Or did you forget everything you ever knew about _real_ work while you were playing around with these New York pussycats?"

"We'll find out tomorrow, won't we, Timothy?"

Dugan huffed a little laugh, and came with her when she turned back toward camp. She didn't exactly feel lighter -- not quite. But she felt a little more centered in herself.

It was good to know she had options, good to be reminded that the things she was doing now were out of choice rather than bare necessity. She could change her mind, if she really had to.

Sometimes the thing that made it possible to shoulder a heavy weight was reminding herself that she'd chosen to take it on.

She toed out of her boots and settled down in her sleeping bag. Across the fire, Dugan grunted as he got himself into a comfortable position. The snoring started up a moment later.

Peggy rolled over and gazed up at the stars. That constellation-naming game ... she really _had_ forgotten about it. She remembered few of the specifics anymore, but from what she recalled, they'd never been able to remember most of the constellations even when they were naming them. The details had changed from night to night. It was really just an excuse to make ridiculous, dirty jokes and relieve tension. A reason to play ... a reason to laugh.

She raised a finger and slowly traced lines among the cold, clear pinpoints of light in the great void above her.

"That one is the Griffith," she whispered, making an odd, lopsided rectangle. It looked nothing like a building, but that was part of the fun. "And let's call this one ... Chief Dooley's favorite tie."

It wasn't quite the same. She'd lost the knack for it, or maybe never really had the knack when she wasn't being egged on by a bunch of grown men acting like twelve-year-olds. But it made her smile, and she quietly traced patterns in the stars until her eyelids grew heavy and darkness blotted out the sky.


End file.
